Well.

Here, sweet and darling Lucy provides you with a dramatic representation of my day.

Now, one thing that had to be done was running up to Wheeling to pay a traffic ticket. Hubby’s, not mine (expired registration, nothing exciting). He had forgotten to mail the payment in, just realizing last night that oh, it was due today! So it fell upon me to drive out to Wheeling to make the payment. It’s a pretty drive, so I wasn’t too upset, much as I hate losing work time. But, I figured, perhaps I’ll see something cool to take a picture of! Wheeling is a neat city.

Waking up, the first order of the day for me is feeding the kitties lest they begin nipping at Ben’s toes. Unfortunately, when I grabbed the kitty food out of the fridge…It wasn’t cold! What? My hands touching everything in the fridge, I confirm what I’d feared: our pretty much brand new fridge (well, it’s almost 3 years old, but…who hears of dying refrigerators?) has died. Thankfully, the freezer is working famously, but the fridge? Not so much. Argh! We’ve faithfully cleaned coils and all, but….darnit!

(Note: DO NOT buy an LG fridge. Do NOT. Ours is not the only one that has malfunctioned this way, and based on what Hubby found, we were lucky to get three years out of our LG refrigerator.)

The internet yields nothing I don’t already know about. Neighbor Mr. J comes over to take a look, but he thinks a repairman will do better. Since I need to get to Wheeling, because I’m sure government workers get two hour lunches, I send Hubby all the info I can in an email so he can call a repairdude.

Off I went to Wheeling, having (of course!) to stop for something to eat—for me AND the car, Mr. J suggesting I leave the fridge closed.

The task of finding parking in downtown Wheeling near the courthouse. This is not as easy as you might think, but at last I came upon a prime spot right in front of the armed forces recruiting center (had I known, I’d have brought cookies for them!). Up to the courthouse I went, beneath the infant sidewalk trees in 100 degree heat and, of course, river humidity. None of Wheeling’s pedestrian crossing buttons work. Tap, tap, tap away at them, but for my money, you’re better off chancing traffic (it is West Virginia, people tend to be very nice here).

Through the ‘security’, to the ticket payment office, and there I am given unhappy information. I need X, Y, and E. Oh, COME ON. Sigh.

Rushing back to the car (gosh, it is hot today, I could use a limeade…), I call Hubby and leave a voice mail with the ‘new’ information. The phone rang just as I reached my faithful Chevy, and Hubby gave me newer information that was, I hoped, good. X, Y, and E had already been mailed to the bureaucrats in question.

Turning around, I hope for a fine young sailor to at least smile and offer his arm to help me cross the street (hey, I was decked in my 30s-style finest!), solely for the good cheer factor likely to result on both sides. No such luck. Alas! Back to the courthouse through Wheeling’s simmering pea soup. Back to bureaucrat office #1. Sent to bureaucrat office #2. End up in wrong office due to bad directions, but am sent in the right direction. Get everything straightened out at office #3. Hooray! One dilemma solved.

Back through the heat, and I begin to wonder: Why doesn’t Wheeling have any street vendors? There’s a market, I tell you! I’d have paid five bucks for a cold anything. And maybe a buck for a small ice cube. All this from a gal who LOVES heat and humidity.

There is an awesome sign right across from the recruiting center. But it’s a dark building, the stone stained by decades of pollution, and the sign is too, as the white neon, now sullied, is mounted flat onto the building. The hot sunlight is hitting buildings across the street. Forget it. Next time. (It was advertising $8 hotel rooms. That old!)

On my way home, I do my best to find dry ice for packing the fridge at various stores and gas stations. No luck. Apparently this is an unknown substance in northern West Virginia, and I’d have had more luck asking for a glass of water from the Fountain Of Youth. I realize how lucky I am to have neighbors who happily let me put my just-purchased gallon of raw milk and farm eggs in their refrigerator. That, at least, is safe.

For a while, Hubby and I play phone tag. This while Ben refuses to go to the bathroom after being in the house for hours, because darnit, Ben is HOT and apparently, there is a heat index at which collies will not use the collie facilities.

Finally, I get Hubby on the phone. Every repairman he talked to pretty much laughed when hearing about our LG refrigerator problem, then told him that we are better off just buying a new fridge. So…we do.

Because we really do live in the sticks (albeit Mayberry-like sticks), the new fridge will be here in 2-3 weeks. I kid you not. But they are hauling the old one away, if I don’t host a neighborhood LG bonfire in it first.

This is when we are very thankful for the fact that Hubby has a fun part-time gig at a major appliance retailer (read: for the discount on small electronics & related things). I mean, really: golly. This was an expense we didn’t want or need! I really want my bedroom done. (insert pout here) Our kitchen chairs will have to wait for re-chroming.

In the meantime, we now have a dorm fridge…In the living room. It’s big enough for my milk and eggs, the pet’s food, my medicine, and various meat, dairy, and other projects that need to be kept cold. It looks AWESOME. (I almost cried. Clutter is my nemesis.)

Oh well. We do at least now have a way to keep our food cold, and thank God the freezer is still working and we got an excellent price on the new fridge (a brand which has across the board awesome reviews). Thank God we have electricity to run a fridge and fabulous neighbors who are hosting my food (all fascinated by the milk—Mr. P, guardian of my precious raw milk, thought it was very cool, as he remembers drinking milk straight from the cow himself at his grandmother’s farm when he was a boy).

So that was my day. It ended more nicely, because neighbors kept coming in to ask what happened with the fridge (told you it was Mayberry!), their jaws dropping in shock and disgust at the poor quality of LG’s appliances. They chatted and made us laugh, and Mr. J’s lovely wife Mrs. M not only forced a gigantic zucchini into my kitchen, she let me see the house again (we saw it right after they bought it, when it was absolutely GUTTED; it is beautiful now, and though she is our parents’ age, she loves vintage and retro things, too). So despite the poopy things, today could have been much worse, and overall, we are pretty blessed.